Cardas Golden Presence - anyone familiar?

I use all Cardas Cross with fantastic results. I have wanted to try the Golden Cross myself. Reviewers (and even George Cardas himself) have said the sound gets warmer with the Golden Cross. Alas, I am unfamiliar with the golden presence, but I think it is more closely related to the Golden Reference.

It's the model between GR and NR.

the presence is listed below the golden reference on the cardas website but according to the prices on fatwyre.com, the presence is significantly less expensive than the golden cross ($700/m vs $870/m).
Therefore, I'm assuming the sound is closer to the cross than to the more revealing reference series.

I auditioned Cardas Cross, Neutral Reference, Golden Cross and Golden Reference *interconnects* a couple years ago. I ultimately bought Golden Cross: both Goldens had a lot more resolution than NR & Cross, but the slight added warmth of GC aided my system and ears over GR. But I found NR to be one of the best $500 ICs out there, far better than Cross, which was too syrupy and congested for me.

A couple months ago I was auditioning speaker cables, including Neutral Reference and Golden Presence. The NR spkr cables had all the great attributes I liked in the ICs. I had high hopes for the GP, but rather than filling the gap between NR and GR as expected, it seemed to be a 'cross' between regular Cross and NR. I could discern NO advantages in resolution, detail, smoothness between GP and NR that differentiated the GR ICs from NR. For the extra $$, it seemed to be just a warmer NR -- which is not a bad thing at all for a lot of systems. But now I had the 'warmth' with my ICs and the rest of my system and needed a more neutral cable. So for me, Golden Presence didn't justify its pricepoint closer to their GC/GR series.

BTW, after LOTS of A/Bing, the final contenders were NR and Wireworld Polaris 5. I chose the WW in part due to closeout pricing, but still wonder if I'd be a smidge happier with the Cardas NR...

Thanks Sdecker - I too am looking for new speaker cables and was considering going with the GC since I have been very happy with the ICs. Do you think that an all GC cabled system would be too much of a warm sound?

An all GC system *may* be too warm, but it sure depends on system setup, components, acoustics and preferences. George Cardas is no dummy so it's likely there's a synergy there that keeps the sound from going overboard. You'd certainly be getting the resolution + a bit of added warmth with the GC spkr cables, but for the $$ you should.

I think the extra $$ for GC over GP would be money well spent given what I perceived of much greater resolution (GC vs NR ICs) vs no greater resolution (GP vs NR spkr cables) and probably equal warmth over NR in both cases...

I can't recommend the Cable Company highly enough for auditioning esp the higher priced wires so you can be more confident about how things sound.

You may want to try something like an Audience Au24 for speaker cables. I used to have Cross speaker cables and various Cardas IC's. I was getting too much warmth and eventually got the Audience. Made a big difference.

Hi
a bit off topic, though still some relevanve.
I have had the cardas golden reference biwire speaker cabeles, i used it for about 2 month and found it disappointing. The mid bass was bloated and the cabels sounded toatally unrevealing ( used with classe monoblocks and bw 802d), i replaced them with acoustic zen double barrel - huge difference, sound is not bloated, much air, great details. I think cabels are very much a matter of taste, I would recommend auditioning on ones own system before finalizing your purchase.

Sdecker,

I completely disagree with your findings.

You do realize that that GP & the GR are the same exact cable!! With the GP only containing one braided shield instead of two braided shields as in GR. The two sound very similiar with the nod towards openness going to GP vs GR which is a little darker overall. That's basically it.

Hifichic, how are the GP and GR the "exact same cable" if one contains one braded shield and the other has two and one sound more open and the other is "a little darker"? Sounds like two completely different cables to me, based on your description.

I don't know about the Golden Presence speaker cable, but I recently bought the Presence IC, and it was much better than the Neutral Ref, and sounded pretty similar to the Gold Ref. Hey, Hifichic guy, I also thought the Presence sounded more open than the Reference. Maybe the extra shielding on the Gold Ref makes it somewhat less open.

I'm quite pleased with my Presence purchase, and agree the Presence is a very open and neutral cable with nice weight. I've had enough of thin sounding and dull sounding cables.